HARC Seminar Series 2024-25

Western Scotland, incorporating the Western Mainland and islands, has several Gaelic placenames along its coasts that are suggestive of a network of observation points guarding maritime routes. Most of the places are hills, with the Gaelic names Teine (fire) and Faire (watch/sentinel). A combination of desk-based study and site visits demonstrates that the sites allowed for the observation of key waterways across long distances, enabling those manning the sites to warn their community of a possibly imminent attack. Where a series of beacon or watch places occur close together in a logical sequence, it indicates a co-ordinated approach across an island or wider geographic area, while also suggesting that many of the placenames denoting beacon and watch sites may have been lost. As with many pre-modern placenames, providing precise dates for the names of the sites is difficult, and the paper includes a discussion of the likely context of the names. A co-ordinated defence system implies a high level of resources and planning at least at the local or regional level, and this knowledge helps to date the sites. Further clues to dating are possible by examining the political and military context of the medieval period. It is determined that the sites could belong to multiple periods from the Viking Age on, and it is likely that many of them were used at various times over the centuries. The paper focusses on the era of Scandinavian Scotland. 

While digital media can augment community arts engagement and dissemination, significant challenges can arise, including incongruencies with local communicative practices and cultural aims.  The architectures of everyday communications have political and cultural significance that deserve attention, and issues of knowledge ownership, privacy, and economic values embedded in technical architectures can undermine the empowering potentials of digital media in community projects. Studies account the contested terrain of community-managed technology resources and the discord between technology architectures and local epistemologies. This paper develops insight into the intersections of generational norms and the tactical uses of communication media within community arts projects.  The paper has two main parts. The first part presents a critical review of theoretical and empirical work on intergenerational relations in community arts projects. The second part draws on findings from fieldwork conducted in the Amami Islands, Japan, with co-researcher Prof. Tomoko Kanayama. 

This paper examines the intersection of hauntology, rhizomatic theory, plunderphonics, and AI in electronic music composition. Utilizing Jacques Derrida’s hauntology and Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizome theory, it analyzes contemporary music production techniques that disrupt linear temporality and challenge originality. Focusing on two compositions, ‘Carrying the Shadow’ and ‘Faint Residue’, which use AI-assisted audio separation and plunderphonic sampling, the study demonstrates how technology and nostalgia create a sonic landscape. It argues that hauntological and rhizomatic approaches enable musicians to explore memories, identity, and the spectral nature of audio, contributing to the discourse on technology’s role in music production. 

James V of Scotland succeeded the throne as an infant, claimed his majority as a youth at sixteen and died aged thirty, meaning that – according to some contemporary didactic writers – James died on the cusp of reaching the “estate of manhood”. The political experience of minority rule and impact on the kingdom has been much discussed in a Scottish context, as James was neither the first nor last minor king of Scotland. Yet, significantly less work considers how these monarchs were viewed by others in terms of their masculine identity and what this meant in terms of their kingship at home and abroad. Christopher Fletcher argues that an analysis of the language associated with manhood provides a means of identifying “unspoken, commonplace ideas of a society” that can better facilitate gendered analysis of actions and rhetoric. Inspired by Fletcher’s approach, this paper uses a gendered analysis of contemporary texts – such as poetry, didactic texts and diplomatic letter collections – to explore how James was perceived as he came of age in the most powerful position in the realm and what this can add to our wider understanding of kingship and masculine identity more generally.

Before departing Venice for his embassy in France in 1694, Nicolo Erizzo sat for his portrait. Superb in his ambassadorial toga, he is flanked not by the signs of office or classical status symbols, but unusually by five of his many offspring. Strikingly, diplomatic history has rarely considered the role of the family in early modern international relations. 

Proposing an original focus to the 'New Diplomatic History', this paper follows Erizzo's use of his children to conduct soft diplomacy and enter new spaces at Versailles. Moreover, I will ask whether there was diplomatic gain to be had by flaunting fertility and engendering even more children whilst abroad...